Events . Secret Planet Series: El Khat

Secret Planet Series: El Khat

Yemeni Junkyard Dance Party
Concert by Pandemic
Bottlerocket Social Hall 1226 Arlington Ave Pittsburgh
All Ages $20

(Yemeni Junkyard Dance Party)
https://elkhat-music.bandcamp.com/

7pm doors, 8pm music

ALL AGES

$20 ADV / $25 DOORS

[This show is part of the Tech25/Bottlerocket world music collaborative series SECRET PLANET. Find tickets to other Secret Planet shows at LInktree

Secret Planet tunnels deep into the borderless musical underground to bring you a season of musical experiences curated by people you trust. We’re a North East collective of independent presenters from New England to the Mid-Atlantic with big ears for innovative sounds and authentic performances.

Eyal el Wahab, the bandleader/cellist/composer at the core of El Khat, brings us a raucous, clattering songbook of retro-futurist melodies inspired by the Golden Age of Yemeni music in the 60s.

Using an orchestra of instruments old and new, many repurposed from junk objects and turned into instruments that sound similar to traditional Arabic and North African lutes and percussion, Tel Aviv based El Khat have imagined an indelible stamp of polyphonic, harmony soaked, pan-Arabic braindance.

Careful listeners will pick up on strains reminiscent of Omar Souleyman’s dabke; Ethiopiques organ sounds a la Mulatu Astatke; and unashamedly sing-along choruses, albeit in Arabic, reminiscent of Bowie or McCartney.

El Khat is a band from Tel Aviv, Israel featuring musicians with diverse backgrounds, Iraq, Poland, Morocco, and Yemen. Khat is an addictive leaf that has been chewed socially in Yemen and the Arabic peninsula for over 600 years. The group is led by Jewish Yemeni Eyal El Wahab.

Related Entities: Bottlerocket Social Hall Pandemic
Tags: Afrobeat World Music